Hi Andy. Don't forget to send us the details of where you would like your mug sent to - info@greensignals.org is the best email. You won with the quiz prize with your answer of Bank to Tower Gateway junction on the DLR! Cheers. Richard

I guess it depends on the index used Trevor. If you take the BoE inflation calculator (which uses CPI from 1988 and a modelled index using RPI prior to that) then £500,000 in May 1986 equates to £1,449,000 now. Construction price inflation is different and harder to evaluate. I haven't had time to do that I'm afraid but I would expect it to be materially higher than CPI. So let's speculate for a moment and say it is 3x the CPI index. That would make your £500,000 become £4,500,000. Haxby station (a very basic station from what I can make out) currently has a projected cost of £24,000,000. Something, somewhere is not quite right.....

@@GreenSignals - Thanks for the comprehensive response. Something somewhere is, indeed, not right!

Thanks for the suggestions, some very useful comparisons.

Thanks. There may have been some land acquisition costs and that will be more expensive in urban areas but even so....!

I agree totally crazy money. I know back in 2008 when I worked for FGW as it was back then!! To install lifts and a bridge was around £250k

You don't have to look far to see ludicrous costs in the rail industry! Previous episode of this podcast cited a station that costed out at £62m for two platforms and a bus shelter. Even these guys thought that might be a big on the high side. Rail is a crying shame. Horrible productivity and innovation. Sundays are still not part of the normal week in a public transport industry in 2024. Three to four times the coach fares and always more expensive than driving. Very sadly, rail is a basket case.

Quite possibly subbed out then subbed out again so the pie gets splits into more pieces each wanting some profit........with BR all that added cost didnt really exist.......legal, insurance, contractual etc

Agreed - feels excessive, even allowing for inflation.

Part of this is historic and relates to how BR finance was classified by the Treasury. There were defined rules as to what could be classed as “revenue” expenditure and what constituted “investment”. Day to day maintenance and renewals was generally all classified as “revenue”. Investment related to big schemes such as electrification, re-signalling, even though track renewals were critical components in the scheme!

It most certainly would. An excellent idea.

@@GreenSignals I hope Richard is able to go through the £24m cost 'line by line'. (Or £6m for the 'beacon' footbridge at Garforth, or £80m for Headbolt Lane.) These costs really do need challenging or, as this podcast points out, 'the country' (Government) will decide / has decided we can't afford it. I think this normalisation of upgrade/project costs is a consequence of the split between infrastructure (Railtrack, now Network Rail) and the TOCs on Privatisation. The connection between cost and value has become divorced. Instead of someone saying 'this is the cost - take it or leave it' someone else should be saying 'we can't afford that, what can we change to make it better VFM?' I'm not suggesting everything should be done 'on the cheap' - but all these projects have the appearance of being 'gold-pated'.

Sad yes, but also unacceptable. This is my concern with the railway today. Too many people believe this is the going rate and it becomes, as Roger Ford puts it, boiling frog syndrome. Your list is a good list but every single element you have outlined needs challenge - and when I say challenge, I mean ruthless and relentless attack. Just because something has become 'the going rate' does not mean it should have been allowed to have become so, nor that it needs to stay there. We need to review standards and the application of them, we need to review compensation regimes, we need to review the risk and liability matrix. We need to review our PM "on costs", design assurance cost, the use of consultants, the quality of the specification being used and we need a culture where variations are treated as evidence of a failure to get it right first time. Plus when I say review, i don't mean accept either, I mean hack, cut and trim. And when we've done that, we do it again. And then again. And again. Some things are fair enough. Unit cost of materials has gone up. Land acquisition costs are higher in urban areas and access challenges in urban areas together with local authority rules on what contractors are allowed to do and when they are allowed to do it all impacts on costs. But notwithstanding that, we don't stop until we've got numbers that make sense and are back under control. I was taught by perhaps the greatest Head of Procurement of all, David Bailey at London Underground. His philosophy was simple. Whenever you see a cost that shouldn't be there, you go to work on it and beat it to a pulp. And when you've done that, then you really go to work on it. I fully accept that we wouldn't get there on project 1. But we would get there. It's about mindset and approach. A relentlessly uncompromising and driven approach which treats every pound spent as if it were your own.

Cheers! Really appreciate the feedback.

DB cargo one the largest rail freight operator in UK are owned by DB Germany (German state railway ) bet tax payers money is going there

Sorry - will try and correct in future.....!

Much logic in the American system. Most bills, salaries etc are paid on a monthly basis so the the month is the most important.

​@charlo90952 well we agree to disagree as I find it irritating following an American way for no good reason... monthly payments doesn't merit us following them...

@@scottthompson8386 UK has adopted many Americanisms. Do you say train station or railway station? Shedule or skedule? So far as dates are concerned, the European method of putting year/month/day is probably a good solution.

Will need to check what the relevant standard is. More to follow!

Indeed. We're not finding too many people defending the £24m Garry. Good luck with the competition. The mugs are well worth having!

I remember an installer of bus shelters comparing the cost of erecting one on a busy street with the cost of the same on a rural railway station. All the rules for working on NR property multiplied the cost many times. We must get a grip.

I thought it might actually be overhead allocation / absorption. But you may have a point Simon. Cheers. R

Thanks Ben. Useful benchmarking.

Ah, that is a pain. I do hear though when it is provided that it's very good indeed.

@@GreenSignals had a breakfast on board a TfW last week and it was quite superb!

Is hot food available on Cardiff to Holyhead ?

@@user-ws5bn1rq2i only on the evening service 1W96 which is 1714 Cardiff - Holyhead

@@user-ws5bn1rq2i subject to the availability of a 67 hauled loco set. Unfortunately these seem to have significant reliability issues

high speed heavy axle weight trains.....now there is a quick way to increase maintenance costs.

Ah, that we can't do. At times of high demand, there has to be some method of ensuring we don't end up with really chronic and unsafe loadings. Plus, we have to take a different view depending on local v long distance. The markets are very different and it's not unreasonable in my view to limit the number of walk up tickets that can be sold on certain trains.

@@GreenSignals I understand the safe loading issue (although that appears to go out the window just before Christmas), but airlines have the same problem and they just stop selling tickets and don't allow anyone else on. You talked about changing thinking in the video, and it's an example of the distance the railway industry has to go to join the 21st century. It must forget its old reasons and start with a blank book.

Many thanks!

That's interesting. Whereabouts is that?

@@GreenSignals Pelletstown, on the double tracked section of the old MGWR

If you are travelling off peak when cheaper fares are available and you have also factored in all the costs of running your car (which will be far higher than just fuel on a full cost allocation basis) and you still choose car, then I agree, it is likely that any fare level that altered your decision is also going to be a level at which we do have severe capacity issues.

My daughter has travelled 8 times between uni in Bristol and home in Sussex since September. With a young persons railcard the fare is around £25, much much cheaper than the fuel cost for my car. Made even cheaper by the fact on all journeys she has been delayed by at least 30 minutes and therefore got over half the cost of rail back!

@@GreenSignals Totally agree with the costs comparison but no car owner will look at that equation when comparing especially for an adhoc leisure journey when the total cost has already been paid / budgeted for.

Road freight is massively subsidised compared to car users , road repairs and upgrades tend to be only due to road freight (lorry's/ trucks)

The fares in Scotland were frozen for several years while they rose in England and Wales.

What type of device are you listening to these podcasts on? I listen via KZfaq on my IPad and it is superb.

In fairness to Mr Bubba, on this particular episode I was fighting (as I have been for a while) a truly shocking cold and so this recording did have more filtering on than usual otherwise you would either have heard me sniffling for 45 minutes OR I would have had to manually suppress the volume on every gap. The cold is now better to a degree and so I will keep the sound a lot cleaner next week and see what that sounds like. Having said that, it's only this week that I've done that so if you have had audio issues on previous weeks, that I am not entirely sure about. Cheers. Richard

@@GreenSignals It does sound like low bandwidth - With the internet and broadcasting continuing to merge it is a wider problem not one unique to this podcast and not even a problem at all for some who have wider tolerance. I find calls via PC or mobile phone connections nowhere near as stable and easy to hear as analogue land lines for example. The quality is clipped and compressed and yes, nasal - sounding. I do enjoy the podcast though and will keep listening.

@@simonpilk PC on KZfaq. KZfaq generally is very good quality. It will be a recording issue I suspect.

@@GreenSignals is that why you didn’t venture on a trip to Inverness with a certain locomotive?

That might just be because there were few, if any, profits to send. Abellio withdrew from the U.K. market because the Dutch Parliament could not countenance Nederland Spoorwegen paying for the privilege of running trains in Britain! DB undertook to re-invest any profits from its U.K. businesses in the U.K.

​​​@@gordondudman240 Thank you! I'm tired of commenters who believe in fairy tales such as the Magic Money Tree and stopping the profit motive as solutions for all the problems of railways. Malcolm is simplistic and trite.

Do you mean fares or new build stations? If you meant the former then I definitely don't agree. That's financially unsustainable. If you mean the latter, then I'm more in your ballpark!

​@@GreenSignalsI mean fares at least on the extreme end where journeys are hundreds of pounds. They are completely unaffordable. Half a week's wages. It cannot just be business clients using those surely.

Hi Michael, You can send us an email at info@greensignals.org with any ideas!